Fewer than a third of the most senior jobs in the UK are currently held by women, prompting calls for quotas to be forced on male-dominated British boardrooms.

Female candidates have been most ignored when senior posts in the armed forces, courts and universities are filled, new figures show.

And the European Commission is now considering new laws to get more women into top management jobs, including mandatory quotas for the private and public sectors.

As a consultation on the issue closed today, EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said it is 'crystal clear' the issue needed to be addressed in the UK.

Woeful: Only 30 per cent of senior employees in the UK are women, according to new study

Overall, women occupy on average 30.9% of top jobs across 11 sectors in the UK, including business, politics and policing, new BBC figures show.

The armed forces and judiciary have the fewest women in top posts - 1.3% and 13.2% respectively - while secondary education have the most at more than a third, or 36.7%.

According to the findings, women represent 1.3% of brigadiers or their equivalent and above across the Army, Navy and RAF; 13.2% of the most senior judges; 14.2% of university vice-chancellors; 16.6% of the most senior staff in the police; and 34.7% of the senior civil service.

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Women are most strongly represented in secondary education, where they make up 36.7% of headteachers, and in public appointments, where they account for 36.4%, the analysis found.

Cherie Blair backed quotas for women in the boardroom and Parliament in a speech last December.

'The truth is that we have waited and waited and unless we do take special measures to look at the systemic reasons why women aren’t making it to the top, we are never going to succeed,' she told the BBC.

But Edwina Currie, the former Conservative health minister, told BBC Breakfast that she opposed quotas for women.

'I would love to see more women at the top in all sort of posts, and particularly things like judges, where it really does matter,' she said.

Upset: Cherie Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, says that a quota system is needed to help women get into senior positions

'But I think the way forward is for us women to be as good as we can get and to go and bang on that door and say "Actually, you are missing really good talent here".'

She added: 'The moment you start having special arrangements, the people who come through have not acquired the talents and the skills that they will need for the majority.

'I used to say in Parliament, for example, that people who came in on the all-women shortlists, most of them were absolutely useless. Most people can’t remember who they were.'

Yesterday a former High Court judge said women and ethnic minority judges who are not up to the job have been appointed because of diversity targets, a former High Court judge has warned.

Baroness Butler-Sloss, formerly the most senior woman judge in England and Wales, said that there had been ‘too much enthusiasm for diversity and not enough for merit’ in the appointment process.

As a result, judges had found themselves ‘failing’ because they were ‘not able to bear the strain of the judicial process’, she said.

She told the House of Lords: ‘I have a vivid recollection of a woman judge many years ago who was a very fine pianist. She should have remained a pianist.

‘I strongly support diversity when - and only when - it equals merit,’ she said.

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It's a man's world: Women get just 30% of top jobs in Britain as Europe prepares to force more females into senior posts